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25 Hour News and 25 Year Blues

The Anna Raccoon Archives

by Petunia Winegum on February 21, 2015

Our beloved landlady suggested this additional feature, which should get a few of you going. What was your life like 25 years ago? Believe it or not, that’s 1990 – yes, a full quarter of a century has passed since Thatcher cried: ‘Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!’ That’s not Daryl Hall on the left, by the way – ’tis moi as I was 25 years ago. What was I doing in 1990? I was making music with a pal; the previous year I’d been in a guitar band and when they split I got into the burgeoning dance scene big time and started fiddling with electronics; we worked under the name ‘Inferno’ (What do you mean, you’ve never heard of us?). I was listening to the likes of 808 State, Inner City and all the other Rave-era stuff as well as the Mondays, Roses and Soul II Soul, and some more poppy stuff like Deee-Lite. Just to be different, though, I wasn’t having E’s for breakfast; I was snorting speed. That’s probably why I weighed six stone.

I was signing-on. I had a dog called Patch. I was head-over-heels in love with somebody who didn’t feel the same way about me (some things never change – though the memory of her remains heart-skippingly untarnished). I was 22 and was still ordering ‘Melody Maker’ from the local newsagent. I remember watching ‘Twin Peaks’ and ‘Vic Reeves’ Big Night Out’, and Tracey Corkhill aborting Barry Grant’s baby on ‘Brookside’. England making the World Cup semi-final enlivened a tournament that contained some of the dreariest games of football I’ve ever sat through. No wonder Gazza cried.

And that’s about it – apart from the fact that I also had a nervous breakdown and received psychiatric treatment for the first (‘though not the last) time. So, that was me 25 years ago. Where were you?

We bought our first house in May 1988 when interest rates were 7.5% and falling, but they took a sudden upturn even before we moved in and, by February 1990, mortgage interest was at 15% and the monthly payments took up the lion’s share of our very modest income.

The local police were doing house calls around then to advise on burglary prevention measures. I remember the visiting officer surveying our meagre possessions and saying, “I shouldn’t bother, if I were you. No-one’s going to burgle this place.”

At the risk of revealing far too bloody much: in February 1990 I was living in San Francisco and having a whale of a time, but failing in my attempt to legally stay there. Rather than be deported, I returned home in August with the HIV I had acquired while in USA. My sister told me that while I had been away, the law had changed and I needed to take out my own pension. I told her I would not live that long. I worked until 1993, when the virus took me to hospital and gave me an AIDS diagnosis. There were no drugs to treat it, no protease inhibitors, integrease inhibitors, no NNRTIs and so every week was a possible exit door.

So I partied like it was 1999 (a few years ahead of schedule).

I underwent radiation therapy for cancers in my lymph system and then wonder of wonders, drugs that work appeared, and I became (and continue to be) a pharmaceutical guinea pig. Yes, there is no doubt the drugs do work. There is also no doubt they are toxic to a degree and side effects can be debilitating. So I continue life, and in doing so, have tried to help others who have a rough time. I don’t party any more but frequently wonder: “Why am I still here when many other are not? And I never did take out that pension.

Now that’s what I’d call a souvenir….certainly beats plastic Statues Of Liberty and “I <3 NY" tshirts. Can't say I feel your pain but having jumped that particular viral scythe twice in my life, twice when by all the rules I SHOULD (or even deserved) to have tested positive , I can appreciate the fear you must have lived with …especially back in the 4H Club days . "Gods Curse Upon Sodomites" and the general media whipped P A N I C.

The irony being, to immigrate into USA, you had to be HIV negative. They didn’t take the “infected”. Then the process went wrong and I had to start again, by which time I tested positive, rendering me one of those”infected,” while incubating a lovely USA homegrown virus.

Still, no self-pity over that. You pays your money, you takes your chances, and I take full responsibility. I expect neither sympathy, nor even tea. And as for jumping the viral scythe, nobody “deserves” to become infected. And it wasn’t so much the fear, death was a given …. I knew what to expect. There were friends dying around me – it wasn’t pretty but you soon got used to it. The biggest thing was the uncertainty – is this bruise actually a lesion, is the sore throat the beginning of the end, will I become one of those with AIDS related demntia so I even forget who my friends ARE? I think I would have preferred a t-shirt.

I hope you don’t think I meant that ‘deserved’ in a Romans 6:23 way. I meant it in the sense , for example, of my first real girlfriend having slept with 50 or so men during our first year together , all unprotected (I guess she wasn’t what you’d call a ‘one man girl’). Or knowingly sleeping with someone who had recently been sleeping with, sans condom, a known HIVer. Or licking the blood off the blade I had stabbed someone with…ie ‘deserved’ as in the ‘stupid gets what stupid does’ sense.

You and me both , you and me both. Unfortunately not only did my “liver leave with my lover” but large chunks of my memory swam away on a patis coloured sea…La Fée Verte being the succubus of my memory (which is why she is tattooed on my arm, badly).

“I’m not an expert but I think your stomach acid would destroy any HIV virus in the blood you licked off.”

You perhaps missed my other comment about being a ‘failed criminal’. As a ‘knifeman’ my blades were, of course, sharper than a legionnaire’s shirt creases but me being me, and having little manual dexterity (and zero common sense) , melodramatically licking blood off a blade led to deep wounds on my tongue and I was assured by the doctors that it would be possible, if not likely, that the infection could pass that way.

Good lawyer? As I pleaded ‘Guilty’ to those charges of Attempted Murder, Armed Robbery, Carrying a Concealed and some small change and then walked out of court with 2 years on probation, I reckon my lawyer was not just ‘good’ but divinely inspired. God certainly kept his side of our deal, I of course reneged.

B imey!! It is astonishing you are still ‘above the sod’ – to coin a phrase. I admire the candour with which you casually reveal your repeated near meetings with the bloke with the scythe…

I remember well the attitude to the emerging HIV/AIDS ‘epidemic’ in the late 80’s, the paranoia, the glee with which some warped people celebrated the fact that ‘homos’ were getting an ‘Arse Injected Death Sentence’. There was not the same attitute to homosexuality as there is now, plenty of ‘poof bashing’ reported in the media. The media campaign against sleeping around/having unprotected sex contrasted with the rave scene and wild orgiastic music at various all night gigs. ‘Bez’ and The Happy Mondays.

I was in the military in the 80’s, facing the East Germans/Russians who were (at one point – when stationed in Berlin) just a few hundred metres away. It was the Cold War (funny (or not) to think we are back at that stage with the modern equivalent of the Eastern Block right now). We practised for war, we lived in a hole in the ground for days in a seemingly Godforsaken bit of Germany, freezing our ‘nads’ off or enjoyed wearing an S6 respirator and NBC suit for several days, on and off. Nights out were spent drinking a little too much. U2 was on the rise, Morrissey, all that stuff. We had fuel tokens and tax free cars to bring back with us. Life was generally pretty good

Homosexuality in the military was seen as likely to render that service person liable to be chucked out. It was not tolerated. I am sure it went on but it was done covertly.

Only this forum could unleash such a fascinating wealth of life stories. Just think, we were all there in 1990, dealing with our own personal dramas and utterly unaware that a quarter-of-a-century later we’d be sharing them on a format that had yet to be invented in 1990 (more or less). If someone had told me I’d one day be going public about things that were then private, I’d probably be horrified. But I actually find the process quite cleansing and I know I’m not alone – which counts for a lot. We are amongst friends!

“that a quarter-of-a-century later we’d be sharing them on a format that had yet to be invented in 1990″

I think I can honestly say that very thought fills me daily with amazement, delight and dread …in equal parts. But then again I genuinely thought digital watches were just the coolest thing…especially my 007 James Bond digital watch that ACTUALLY played the James Bond theme …sorta.

Me 1990, living on the top floor of a high rise in Emden Germany, having married the prettiest girl in the village the year before and Crippled 2nd son having been born in Jan 90. On this day 25 years ago I was out on bail for a double (or triple, I forget) attempted murder, armed robbery blah blah blah and was awaiting my trial in March or April. In that photo I was composing a sermon , having done a deal with God and the DA,come off the litre and a half of vodka daily, put my knives away (actually the Polizei had confiscated them…although they let me keep my Browning Hi-Power…go figure) and hospitalized the drug dealer I used to body guard.

“Nah – terrific writer – and that’s what makes you so!” There is nothing I can say that won’t sound falsely modest….except that to explain to others here that the landlady has had the dubious pleasure of reading some of my more ‘actually took the time to think about what he was writing’ stuff.

Finishing up ‘studying’ at what can now be legally referred to as a University. Wondering why it was so grim & dull and nothing at all like how I had imagined it would be. Blowing grant (remember them?!?) on musical equipment & whichever supermarket bottle offered best price/alcoholic content ratio. Reading NME, Sounds & Melody Maker religiously, placing pretentious small ads in the latter in search of a fellow future superstar… met a couple of nutters, and a visiting American with what I thought was ‘star power’ (arrogance). Thought: “Sod this, I’m off to America!” Less than a year later I arrived, having only met my co-conspirator two or three more times. He was supposed to be picking me up in New York to drive me upstate… but the SuperBowl was on & he didn’t. And I’d previously posted over a ‘compilation tape’ (remember them?!?) with a few of tabs of acid hidden inside the cassette body thinking that we (he & I and the other rag-tab members of the group I’d never even met before) would start our momentous journey towards immortality with a roadtrip ‘trip’ – a really stupid idea with the benefit of hindsight. Froze my ‘ass’ off, bought a bagel & nervously left the biggest bagel-tip in history (having read on flight over how a no-tip was a no-no), wondering why the trains in the mighty US of A only chunter along at about 15 miles per hour… But this was all to come. In short, 1990 was the lighting of a slow touch-paper, and the good/bad stuff was all out there waiting for me to arrive.

Where was I? Little tea-rooms on a Suffolk river, working my backside off, doing bed a breakfast, running antique shop and boat hire (simultaneously!) building a house on my day off…… Woke up around the end of 1990, discovered there was more to life than work, met Mr G, discovered there really WAS more to life than work…. And lived happily ever after. Can’t quite manage the 1990 photograph, but there is this one at the bottom of post that is 1988.https://annaraccoon.com/2012/10/07/of-freedoms-lost/

“How come we’re the only two to have submitted photographs so far? What have they got to hide?”

Au contraire. How could I resist an opportunity to be a ‘cam whore’? There is a photo of me with a serious beard as befitted a Man Of God, penning a mighty sermon against the evils of the 1990 world (and I would hope someone had noticed that they were genuine Ray Bans).

Please don’t take this the wrong way but your own photo screams ‘TRYING TOO HARD’ ! Mind you, I reckon you would have not lacked for teenage (legal of course) ‘tail’. You’ve got that whole ‘The Crow’ smoldering ‘thang’.

14th February 1990. I had come back from Hong Kong where a dose of food poisoning at the Chinese New Year celebrations had left me unable to eat for 10 days, although I was able to manage certain other bodily functions, and lost maybe 2 stone. And there wasnt much of me back then. I started work on Valentines day – again, after a few false starts. And only this week I was thinking of Twin Peaks. I spent a lot of that year channeling Agent Dale Cooper, talking to Diane on my dictaphone, eating damn fine cherry pier and drinking coffee. I hadn’t a penny in the world but life was an adventure. Would but I knew…

Photo or it didn’t happen! I sense a really good blog post hidden in those tantalizing 7 sentences. First off, how did you come to be in HK in the first place? Was there a woman/alcohol/opium involved? Details Gildas, details.

“Now before we get started, have you two fellas got your stories straight? “

There was a woman involved…sort of! I had given up work in “The City” and taken a break before re-starting my chosen career in another area after a couple a false starts. So before I started I went to Hong Kong where my friend (the woman) had been given the prized 6 month trainee stint in the HK office. I arrived just before Chinese New Year, and this was my downfall. On the first night a gang went out for dinner on a junk. I can still remember the revolving table full of food, including muscles and other sea food, which I loved so I tucked in merrily. UNFORTUNATELY, it being Chinese New Year, it transpired the fishermen hadn’t been out and the sea food was old – and full of God knows what. About 24 hours later I had just finished a stint at a Casino in Macao and had made it back to the hotel with a beautiful Scandinavian girl (Very 007 and true) when I cam over quesie…and that was that. By morning I was trapped sitting on the loo whilst vomiting into the sink at the same time (not very 007). In a nutshell, that was it. I dont like to think of the ferry ride back from Macao. 4 hours, 200 passengers and only 1 loo, as I recall. Not nice! Couldn’t eat for 10 days. Every time tried it re-fed the bugs and off I went again!

Working 16-18hrs a day and smoking (at least) 60 a day. Seeing the kids occasionally but desperate for the next promotion. Heart to heart with daughter (age 12) me on receive. Gave up smoking, slowed down on the work, jelled with the family, put on mega weight, relaxed to enjoy my lot and got promoted for the last time until I retired. Wouldn’t change a thing.

1990 – Mmmm …. quite a year. Early on, finally completed a 3-year house-renovation project which had entirely consumed the product of some rapid work-promotions.

Mid-year, embarked on a steamy affair with a red-hot colleague (never a good idea I know, but the humping-hormones thought otherwise). I maybe should have declined when she suggested we go skinny-dipping in a lake where we were staying on expenses, but it was a very warm night and the dinner had been very good ……..

Year-end, head-hunted by another company for 50% more + perks, grabbed it with both hands – bit like the red-hot colleague.

Not the best of times for me, found I needed a hysterectomy, my mum died and my husband lost his job. Still we came through it all and celebrated 15 years of happy marriage in 1990. We do have some great adventurous writers here. My biggest one was being evacuated by the American military from Teheran in 1979, after that it was a fairly quiet life, a few years in Germany then back home to Scotland then finally settled in England in 1996.

Glad to, quite a long story with many amusing incidents in the months before we had to leave. We really loved it and stayed until forced to go, just two days before everything collapsed. We were evacuated to Greece with our cat, no way I was leaving her so a good thing it was the Americans , my husband worked for a U.S. company, as the Brits wouldn’t take pets. I would have donned a chador and stayed I think!

A few months before we had to evacuate out apartment as there was a suspected bomb in the restaurant below, I was told it was selling pork. Anyway I grabbed my kitten and my purse, had my priorities right! Suzy was a wild Iranian kitten and not easy to tame but she was without doubt the cleverest cat I have ever owned and I have had a great many over the years. I loved her to bits,

It was always our wish to go back one day, it felt like unfinished business but when my husband died I knew it would never be possble. When we were first there we went for a meal and ordered two vodkas, got a bottle and two glasses! Had the cheek to have two. Teheran was wonderful then and I will always treasure the memories despite everything that happened later, the bomb scare, being held at machine gun point outside the Egyption embassy, we were late for curfew. It had a great wine industry and the vodka was good too. most people don’t realise Iran was never dry until Khomeni came back, a day I remember well.

No, I can’t come up with anything much either. Not even the honorable station of ‘being retired.’ From what I can remember, 1990 was a dull year. From being on the dole and living in the cramp circumstances of my parents house, I then gained a job and moved to the equally cramped circumstances of a bedsit. Not much between the two, apart from the fact there was a nice offy and a chinese just down the road. :o)

Well! Much like ATA and ‘oi you’, nothing of great moment to report. The bank I worked for reorganised and I retired on full pension based upon my years in service. I had just turned 50 as it happens which worked out seriously to my advantage. I’ve been a ‘gentleman of leisure’ ever since. Well, that’s the good part. My wife had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis some years before, and the condition was just starting to become troublesome. I went through a period of intense emotional sadness (best way that I can describe it), especially as my eldest daughter divorced. The problem was that I was confronted by problems which I could not solve – something in life that I had never really encountered before; at worst, one could nearly always walk away, or the problem went away. This MS thing was impossible. But I got over it. I remember very clearly the beginning of ‘the cure’. There I was, sitting on the couch feeling sorry for myself and worrying about the wind blowing the chimney off the roof (it was a very windy night), only a sidelamp on to save electricity, and a thought entered into my head. PUT THE SODDING LIGHTS ON! GET A BEER! DO SOMETHING! But that was only the beginning. The ‘unsolvable problem’ problem was not finished with me yet. (I hope that this is not too boring!) Strange things started to happen to me physically. For no reason at all (for example, when sitting reading the paper), I would suddenly go hot and my heart would start beating rapidly. That happened from time to time, but what finally made me go to the doctor’s was an incident on the golf course. What happened was so ‘out of the blue’ and strange that it was quite a shock. I bent down to pick up my ball and the ground came up at me!. I kid you not. I actually experienced, in my mind, the ground rising up to meet me. The doc told me that it was a good thing that I went to see him when I did because I was on the point of a nervous breakdown. He prescribed an immediate short course of tranquillisers (?) and told me to stay off alcohol for the duration of the course (a few days) and then an open-ended seroxat type of pill. The problem was constant and unremitting ‘anxiety’. Traumas come and go, but herself and I survive. I mention the above so that we can understand why it is that people like me, who have not spent half their lives gallivanting around exotic places in the world, can get on so well with people like Blocked Dwarf. Totally different life-styles, but united in our detestation of the anti-smoking, anti-drinking, anti-pleasure puritans. In our own ways, we have had REAL problems, here and now, some related to health (herself’s health in my case) and some related to externalities (as they are called these days), and not the imaginary problems dreamt up by computer models designed by quack professors in universities. Enough.

“can get on so well with people like Blocked Dwarf. Totally different life-styles, but united>>”

We have more in common than just our detestation of those who only want what is good for us. I too care for my wife 24/7/365 -a paranoid psychotic and I too suffered from ‘burn out’ due to her illness. Back when she wanted to ‘take the children to be with Jesus’ I don’t think I slept properly for about 3 years…but that was around 1992 I think so a bit this thread’s cut off point. Suffice to say that there were several times when I thought the kids would only see their ‘Mama’ again in the Closed Ward, the prison…or the graveyard.

1990 has seen the young SAoT start the first year of a surveying degree. I thought I might learn how to build houses. Everyone nees houses right? So how can that be unpopular? Surely that’s beyond politics?

Were I able to telephone my youthful self I would say “Do you really want to spend the next 21 years (1994 to present) dealing with assorted local gibbering politicians, numbskull local people, greedy land owners and sociopathic PLC company directors, being plagued by every man and his dog who is variously buying, extending or selling a house, along with interspersed periods of no-income recessions?

No, you don’t. Do IT instead, politicians don’t understand it and its international.

That said, leisure and personal development time has been great and best of all (by a county mile) there is now a young master SAoT coming up to his sixth birthday.

Other man’s grass….. I went into IT ten years before and, beyond the grunt coding-level, it’s every bit as political, scheming, back-stabbing and graft-riddled as any other job. True, it paid quite handsomely, which allowed me to retire at 43 and funded a very cosy lifestyle, but only due to some questionable activities along the way. As a ‘hired-hand’ or an independent, you soon learn to leave any moral sensitivities at home, just do the business and get out before it gets to you.

In 1990 I was well into burn out in my job. Plantar fasciitis making walking a pain and a swollen right elbow making delivering babies torture. The job had changed out of all recognition. I retired at 56 in 1992. An osteopath sorted out my elbow and a sports clinic my sore feet with some sort of sound machine. In that same year my husband sister and brother in law all came away from their current jobs. My tale is very mundane beside all the exciting lives related above. I was on a government survey for nearly 3 years. No problem getting another job. Then with an advice organisation until mid seventies, mostly to do with debt. Well placed to witness what a goverment allowing money to be flung about by mad bankers can do to this country. Pure bribery for 3 terms of office and sod the consequences.

In March 1990 we were on the rim of a spectacular extinct volcano and I have the pictures to prove it – but no I am not posting them! In 1990 we still had no offspring, enjoying a much extended ‘yoof’ which included some travel and partying but also managing to squeeze in paying the mortgage off in chunks whenever we could. Thank god we did that, as it at least gives us the freedom to work part time. I’m rather jealous as I’m now in my late 50s and have no prospect of retirement until I’m 66. (What really gets my goat is that neither has my partner, now 60. He’s been working in manual jobs since he was 15. Do the maths. And yes, he has to work until 66 too, despite being a working class male, with the lowest life expectancy of any demographic group.)

1990? Second year of working my way through drama college. Learning about computers at evening classes (Anyone else remember what a ‘Winchester Drive’ was?) Spending an unpleasant year working part time in a call centre dealing with the generally information-lite and ill mannered both on and off the phone. The rest of the time driving and delivering vans and repmobiles to make ends meet. Having a social life for which zero was more aspiration than reality.

Tell you the truth my 1990 passed in a kind of a relentless, head-down working blur. Nothing momentous or memorable.

From memory 1990 was a funny old time for me : I met the missus in 1984 when working for a well known Jap Electronics Co. They drove me to a nervous breakdown and then discarded me in 1987. I went looking for a job and did temp work for about a year before my better half asked two sensible questions “Are we making more money? Is this a sustainable existence?” so I carried on temping.

So in 1990 I was a temp. I moved to being an ‘IT consultant’ a few years later – same work, higher pay rate and I carried on doing that until I retired some 20 odd years later. I guess a proper job just wasn’t for me.

My late husband worked freelance IT for years but was offered a permanent job with the company he had freelanced for in his early 50s . We thought as it carried a very good salary it was worth taking, especially after IR35. I was glad of that when he died in service 10 years later. What surprised me was contractors from all over the UK and Ireland who came to his funeral, but it is a fairly small world and we kept contact with a lot of his old friends.